Chang Sheng County

After the two of them circled past the broken wall and went deeper into the area, Chen Kong finally realized that where they had stayed last night was not some common New Federation urban ruin at all, but a town district undergoing demolition.

The low walls and dilapidated houses all around them had huge red-painted characters for "Demolish" splashed across them.

After passing through the demolition zone, the two soon reached the edge of the square, where the conversations of passersby drifted into their ears.

"Auntie Wang, is the hairtail at the market fresh today? My kid's been going on about it for days!"

"Fresh as can be! It's just gone up by twenty cents. The soap at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative has gone up too. What a life."

Beneath a plane tree at the edge of the square, a middle-aged woman in a blue cloth jacket stood on tiptoe, the bamboo basket in the crook of her arm swaying, half a bar of soap tied with hemp string hanging from its rim.

The fish vendor squatted behind an iron bucket, his scaling knife going swish, swish in his hand. Silvery-white scales splashed across the bluestone pavement, reflecting the morning sunlight.

Listening to the slightly dialectal conversation between the two people nearby, Chen Kong subconsciously touched his own clothes.

He was wearing a Tactical Suit from the Heavenly Martial Training Base, which looked utterly out of place among the crowd dressed in

shirts, bell-bottoms, and workers' uniforms.

Sure enough, not long after they arrived beside the square, several passersby carrying vegetable baskets stopped walking and swept their gazes over them.

A little girl with pigtails even tugged on her mother's hem, pointed at Mi Yao's over-ear headphones, and whispered, "Why does that uncle's hat look like that?"

Fortunately, those